Section 18

, . . Analysis rests head upon hand, and inclines here to reconsider experiments made with the confrere^ — experiments first wondered at, then laughed at.* Were the wonder and the laughter all that was held by the experiments? There was, at any rate, added proof to the Aristotelian aphorism that " common sense is little
* Refer to preceding chapters.
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better than no sense at all." There was proof of the oneness of ignorance and mystery. There was, unde- niably, demonstration that blindness lies not alone with eyes. Holding, as do all things, what is found in the things, shall one not here be led to consider of capa- bility? What is the confrere but another carver show- ing other kinds of images? An image liberated ceases to be a mystery. Mystery when opened is no longer occult; repetition this of the illustration of water as water, of water as the gases oxygen and hydrogen, of water as a world of microscopic life. Means to ends : this the law of the Universal ; the prestigiation of the confrere, exciting first the wonder, then the smiles, of the Umbratile ; the visions of the Umbratile enlist- ing first the concern, later the ridicule, of the confrere.
The dual of the Umbratile, oblivious for the
time of means to ends, thinks to explain away visions by reference to vaso-constriction of the nerve-centres of equilibration, not seeing that similar reference to the eyes would equally apply to the explaining away of objects of ordinary sight. He attempts also to illus- trate visions as resultant of optical defects, but is com- pelled, out of wider examination, to find his cases exceptional.*
Every experiment practised and every vision beheld are equally realities. The thought here considers the world lying within a world as this relates with sub- jectivity. It considers demons seen by a mania-a-
* Sense-deception, alluded to at termination of preceding chapter xi., is antagonized by practice of the process of exclusion. Illustra- tions are afforded in the first four paragraphs of preceding chapter x.
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potuist. It takes in, too, the candlesticks beheld at Patmos, and the part of a hand that was seen writing on the plaster of the wall at Babylon. It does not leave unconsidered a couplet and lily-sprays which later are to show as the inspiration of this book.
Nothing is but as something is found in it. Out of a couplet and three lily-sprays, understood to be seen subjectively, is gradually being evolved, as one person is concerned, entire indifference, if not, indeed, con- tempt, for what is commonly esteemed the meaning of success and prominence in life. Words on a wall proved a sword piercing to his death the heart of Belshazzar. Seven candlesticks constitute the Revela- tion.
It is true, as said by Paracelsus; '* In knowledge is understanding of the supernatural."
Many years ago it happened the Umbratile to pursue a long and fruitless search after a certain mystical book. This search had been abandoned for some time, when accident discovered the volume one day upon the dust-covered shelves of a public library. It will not be difficult to appreciate an enthusiasm ex- cited by sight of the long-coveted treasure, nor will it be doubted that few minutes were lost in securing measure of the contents. Opening the pages at ran- dom, a first thing meeting the eye was a picture of the signet-ring of the writer.* This ring showed a dove half-emerged from a black cloud, holding in its beak a spray of lilies. At the time no particular impression seemed made by this ring and its sign ; yet the reader
* Aurora. Jacob Behmen.
178 SPIRITUS SANCTUS.
is dull indeed who perceives not that it was this appar- ently long-forgotten spray of flowers which converted itself after the many years into three sprays, seen in a dream shortly to be described, and made practical the meaning of the hypostases.
Whence come candlesticks seen by saints, and
words of fate encountered by tyrants, and couplets and lily-sprays beheld by an earnest seeker after truth, come also demons seen by a mania-a-potuist, as well the ills and vexations met with everywhere by him who will not be an optimist. Truly, origin is one, as the Universal is one. Difference as to things seen lies never elsewhere than with a seer. Clouds are both black and golden. Poison and medicine are in the common plant. Taste is never but as tongue is. Odor is alone where there are noses. Nothing is anything else but what it is to the sense that uses it. Perception is eternally with the percipient.
Subjective and Objective ! it is alone an illuminate who is able to comprehend the oneness. Sights beheld through the imagination and sights beheld through the eyes, — there is no difference as to the reality. Here highest and most beautiful wisdom and here the fulness of the universal to an initiate, albeit here foolishness and emptiness to the unspiritual.
Let a matter be here considered. Is it or is it not the case that "state of mind" constitutes a man's comfort or discomfort ? Does a man suffer from fear who is not afraid ? Can a man be made to feel the pangs of death who is knowing absolutely to the fact that there is no death? When fever attacks a man, and he is found overwhelmed by horrible nightmares,
l^ISIONS, 179
could apparitions partake of aught but the beautiful if acquaintance had not been made with the ugly?
Imagination seeks according as it is sent on search by an Ego j it finds what it looks after ; it never comes home empty-handed ?
Something to be added. Imagination is one
with capability. Imagination may ascend or descend or go sideways. It is likable to a sun-ray, which, being thrown into a dark and apparently empty room, discovers millions of inhabitants floating in the line of its track.
Hail, Imagination ! Thou which art the true phi- losopher's stone ! Thou which art means of creation !
. . . Wonderful outlook ! Wonderful inlook ! Noth- ing pushing a man forward, nothing holding him back, — save himself. Man a god, a devil ; high, low, coarse, fine; smelling, not smelling; tasting, not tasting; touching, not touching; hearing, not hear- ing ; seeing, not seeing.
. . . Gifted with perception of the true reality, O Illuminate! with what associations shall a man elect to live? The Now an eternal Now. Space without centre or circumference. Poison and remedy in com- mon plants. Drowning and refreshment in the same water. Clouds black or golden, according as looked at. Snow, a white sheet breeding shivering, or a wealth of crystals dropped down upon the fields. Nothing that is, but as the Is is made by him who uses it.
The holder of the pen, following the leading of an impulse, has wandered quite a thousand miles since
i8o SPIRITUS SANCTUS.
last he sat before these pages. Within the time of a single day during these wanderings he has had dis- covered to him the extreme poverty of his personal inspirations in having been a witness to more than three hundred thousand materializations of visions beheld at one time or another by fellow-countrymen, every one of which visions has had such demonstra- tion made of its oneness with reality as to have be- come feelable and usable by the least sensitive among men. The visions alluded to relate with material things, being of strict likeness and relation, how- ever, with couplet and lilies, with the great star seen by an Umbratile, and with sights beheld in glowing coals.
Foolishness, indeed, to an unvisionary man, are visions seen in red coals, and visionary great stars; foolishness, however, because the man is unapt. To say that things imagined and things real are of common import, and to propose that both are alike practically usable, is to invite from the unapt man criticism not at all complimentary to what is esteemed common sense. Here lies with the critic miscon- ception which it is not at all likely he is able to cor- rect. A critic plausibly questions if a meal imagined be one with a meal eaten. The fault of the critic rests with his plane of looking at a matter. As- suredly it is neither a written nor printed line which is the poem of a poet. A score is not the sonnet ; drawings are not designs. As assuredly, however, is it the case that lines, scores, and drawings are the only poems, music, and designs that "common sense" is able to conceive or to take hold of. Planes relate
VISIONS, l8i
variously with necessities of the body and capabilities of the Ego. Body requires meat for its sustenance; Ego is not a thing having a mouth. There is an ap- petite of taste and another appetite of smell. The first is satisfied only with bread, which is a material that is to be handled and bit into; the latter has its necessity filled alone by odor, which is a material that is subservient to the use of neither fingers nor teeth.
The materializations witnessed by the holder of the pen are to be seen by any person who will visit a patent-office. Multitudinous show-cases at Washing- ton hold the many seen by the writer. To under- stand the material things seen as being wholly and purely materializations of imaginations this patent- office will be wisely entered through the statuary- room of the capitol, where, to the left of the door, is the carved image of Robert Fulton, portrayed as he struggles for means to materialize, or show, a steam- boat to the eyes and uses of ordinary people. A critic, seeing, yet seeing nothing, still decrying the oneness of imagination and reality, repeats his ques- tion as to the meal imagined and the meal eaten. Answer is both no and yes. No, certainly, to the critic, as his query relates with bodily wants and takes no account of the spiritual ; yes, as assuredly, to a questioner who differentiates between Ego and en- vironment, and who has taken in the difference as to the senses of taste and smell.
The things seen in a patent-office are never the things themselves, but representations of them. Be- cause the things seen are crude approximations ef- fected by use of crude materials, the representations i6
1 82 SFIRITUS SANCTUS.
are seldom found to work with a perfectness of an original as this exists in the ideal. Poems are never upon paper as they are in the imagination. Notes are not found distinctive enough to express shades of melody. Drawings are lacking as difference contrasts with mental architectural designs.
A steamboat existing with the imagination of Rob- ert Fulton, and in which he could travel the world over, requires a union of wood and iron and the hand- work of a hundred men before the boxes and bales of commerce can be transported by it from wharf to neighboring wharf. Difference here is with what is to be carried. Intangible relates with intangible; tangible associates with tangible. For a hungry body meat is a necessity. Where hunger is with soul a spread table is an offence.
Passing from Fulton and the form-makers, the eye of one who continues leftward from the great door will find itself quickly attracted to an upturned face looking at imaginations without apparent thought as to any environing of them by material. The face is that of Roger Williams, the Puritan. As this face shows from the marble, it expresses a life for which no Fulton had occasion to materialize a steamboat, nor any Stephenson reason to build a locomotive. What a delight and an illumination is it to gaze into this upturned face, catching out of the reflection faint sem- blance of what is to be seen by one of spiritual devel- opment; this lessening not at all admiration for the materializations of the steamboat maker, but opening conception as to conveyances which carry without the aid either of wheels or material motive-power. Cir-
"SEEING WHATr 183
cumstances alter cases. Roger Williams, left to him- self, would have lived in as close alliance with the spiritual, remaining in Wales, as when, banished from his colony of Massachusetts, he turned for company to the inhabitants of a world unseeable by common eyes.*
Considering that the multitudinous things seen in a patent-office are simply representations of ideas or imaginations, and that an equal reality is found to exist with both, it becomes impressed that what is easiest of attainment offers most to the philosopher; for, as it is with things living in an inventor's imag- ination and things seen materialized upon the shelves of show-cases, so it is with all things, nothing in re- ality being anywhere or being anything save as the anywhere and the anything are to the wants of a user.
XVI. "SEEING WHAT?"
Concerning a Vision and a Dream and what has been found in them.
Day, night, the day again ; Yesterday, to-morrow, eternally the same.
The page being turned back to the concluding paragraph of the chapter on Psychics, text is found for the present one.
Seeing what ? Seeing what one sees. Nothing less, nothing more. Seeing according to fitness or unfitness
* Where the word spirit or spiritual is used in these pages relation is always with Ego and not with Soul.
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as this resides with education and cultivation. Seeing instantly or seeing only after a long time, according to sensitivity. Seeing finally what is found or what is not found to be with a thing seen. Here import of lines with which the pages begin. " Sight of ships by him who cultivates ships, sight of poems by him who cultivates poetry, sight of scores by him who cultivates music, sight of designs by him who cultivates architecture, sight of the Divinity by him who cultivates the divine." A modern scientist, of large renown,, possessed of great sensitivity, natural and cultivated, gives out that new things or combinations of things are continually offering themselves to his view ; these things are one with visions.
Just how a day referred to — a 28th of December — was spent, the holder of the pen is unable to say, by reason of length of time intervening between the date and the present one, and the further fact that noth- ing concerning the matter is found set down. If the day happened to be the first one of the week, or if it was one of rare idle days found at times at the ser- vice of the most busy, there is little doubt but that it was consumed in watching the curling smoke of a hearth-fire rolling away through the throat of a chim- ney. Whether, however, the day was passed in medi- tative mood or in getting through the anxious details of a doctor's life, it was -the case that a Rosicrucian dual which the holder of the pen will now assume to separate from its practical double, and to individual- ize as the favored one gifted with the enjoyment of a beautiful life (being the ''Umbratile, or Doppel-
"SEEING WHATr 185
gaenger," of him who presents this other him), this Umbratile went to bed, where he had not lain long be- fore he was startled by a projection in staring white letters out of the blackness of the room, of the couplet heading the paragraph. There was no deception. He rubbed his eyes, to assure himself of not being asleep ; he sat up in bed, scanning eagerly the strange sight j he got up and lighted the gas, writing the lines down, that morning should not argue for a dream.*
But what as to the import of the lines? To the Umbratile they meant nothing but a subjective ghost, which his science was actively proceeding to lay when the thought or word or idea, *' write," came over him with an impulse quite confounding the intention of analysis, the place of which it took. The Umbratile is not without a facetious aspect; not immaterial enough is, perhaps, the better putting of it ] certainly it is the case that he is too closely identified with his fellow-double to be sufficiently clear of the earthy for full suitability for high purposes. Be this as it may, a
* Paracelsus has a better word than Umbratile, — it is Evestrum. "Only the wise," he says, "pay attention to what comes through their Evestra; others treat such things with contempt. Persons," he goes on to say, " are capable of a nature so spiritual and a soul so exalted that they can approach the highest spiritual plane at a time when their bodies are asleep. Persons who allow such separability to the Evestra have seen the glory of God, the happiness of the saintly, and the wretchedness of the wicked ; and they do not forget their dreams, but remember them to the end of their days. Such things are entirely possible, and the greatest mysteries may be laid open to the perception of the spirit ; and if any earnestly desire such gifts he has only to cultivate that found within himself through which they come, and thus be enabled to see the Mysteria Dei, and to understand them as well as has Moses, Isaiah, and John." 16*
1 86 . SPIRITUS SANCTUS.
response made seemed not in spiritual correspondence. *' Good Lord," he said, " or thou, Mephistopheles, or thou, the other thou, the subjective Satan, what is there to write, seeing that what has appeared is already- written?" In place of an impression dwindling away, other words joined themselves to the first, ** Certi- tude. Summum bonum." The matter was growing in curious interest. Here were a couplet and words placed in juxtaposition, all coming out of darkness, and neither lines nor words showing to the beholder a shade of relation or sense.